“Why does Yezhov want Nightingale?”
“She stole his money. Lots of it.”
“So he ordered a hit?”
“Yes.”
“Of his own accord.”
“Of course, yes.”
“He has the juice to do that all by himself?”
“Of course.”
“Why draw all the attention?”
Malakov gave a slight shrug. “He miscalculated.”
“Meaning?”
“He thought she’d be an easy mark. He was wrong. He hired two amateurs, in my opinion. They screwed it up. I told him not to hire them.”
“Because?”
“They’re stupid, sloppy. If he’d hired someone more trustworthy, with better tradecraft, you and I wouldn’t be talking right now.”
“Because she’d be dead?”
“Because she’d be dead, yes. She’d also be all but useless, a sack of skin and bones.”
“That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be hunting you.”
Malakov gave a derisive snort and shook his head pityingly.
“You don’t believe that any more than I do. The woman’s value is all the things floating around in her head. The account numbers, the names, the other intelligence she has gathered over the years. I have no idea who you’re with. CIA? NSA? SEAL Team Six? Definitely not FBI, with the way you throw bullets around. Doesn’t matter. You want what’s in her head. You don’t give a fuck about her any more than I do or Yezhov does.”
Bolan guessed the guy was playing him and decided to change the subject.
“Fair enough,” the Executioner said. “And what does she know that Yezhov wants?”
“I told you, he wants his money back. That’s all.”
“How did he find her in the first place?” Bolan asked. “She’s been on the run for years.”
“Yezhov has sources. Don’t bother asking me who—I don’t know. I just know he was able to turn someone in her network. Her location was a last-minute tip. I thought it was bullshit. Frankly, I guessed it was a setup of some kind. Malakov had been beating the bushes for her for months. I thought someone had decided to flag us on and it would turn out to be a lie.”
“For what reason?”
Malakov shrugged. “The possibilities are endless. Maybe a competitor hoped to distract him or to humiliate him. Drive him crazy, perhaps. It’s hard to say. In the end, I was wrong and he was right. She was exactly where his source said she’d be.”
“Yet you lost her.”
Malakov’s eyes narrowed. He drew in a big breath of air, swelled his chest out, exhaled slowly.
“I lost no one. I never wanted to hire those two men. I would have handled it much differently.”
“Spare me the strategy lecture,” Bolan said.
Malakov shrugged.
Bolan opened his mouth to speak, but checked himself. A nearby table lamp began flashing, stopping Bolan in midsentence.
Bolan looked at McCarter, who was already on his feet.
The soldier drew his Beretta and started for the door.
Something thudded against it and it swung inward.
A man dressed in a black leather bomber jacket, his face covered with a black ski mask, stood in the doorway. He swung a sound-suppressed Glock in Bolan’s direction. The Executioner dived to the floor just as the weapon coughed twice. Still laying on his side, he raised the Beretta. Before he could squeeze off a shot, gunfire crackled from Bolan’s left and bullets ripped into the man, causing him to jerk in place.
A glance over his shoulder and he saw McCarter, smoke still curling from the barrel of his weapon, moving for Malakov.
A second shooter, this one also masked, came through the door. He aimed his pistol at Malakov and fired twice. Bolan aimed his own weapon at the guy and fired. A pair of tri-bursts drilled into the man’s torso and he crumpled to the ground.
Bolan whirled toward Malakov. The man was heaped on the floor, blood flowing from a wound in his temple.
McCarter, who’d been kneeling next to the Russian, looked at Bolan and shook his head.
“Dead,” he said.
The Stony Man warriors searched the building. Bolan found the man who ran the electronics shop slumped over a counter, dead from a bullet wound to the back of his head. If Yezhov had sent anyone else, they’d fled.
When they returned to the second floor, the soldier phoned Stony Man Farm and asked for them to send a cleanup crew. The upper floor had been soundproofed, so that had at least prevented anyone from hearing the gunfire from McCarter’s weapon.
“How’d they find us?” McCarter asked.
Bolan shrugged. “Maybe they followed us. Maybe Malakov had a microchip sewn into his clothes. Hard to know.”
McCarter nodded. “What’s our next move?”
“Look for another stone to turn over,” Bolan replied.
Chapter 6
Nigel Lawson shut the locker door, leaned forward and rested his forehead against it. The steel felt cool and comforting against his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut and wished in vain that his reality belonged to someone else. How could he do this to her? The thought raced over and over in his head, like a pop-song chorus that had wormed its way into his subconscious and refused to let go.
Pulling his head away from the locker, he opened his eyes and slipped the key into the pocket of his frayed jeans.
He walked a few steps, halted. Commuters pushed past him, obviously unaware of the conflict raging inside the shabby man.
Though normally he was tuned in to his surroundings when he made a drop, the passersby on this day seemed little more than a noisy blur. He drew his hand from his pocket, uncurled his thick fingers and studied the locker key that rested in his sweat-slicked palm. A cloak of guilt hung from his shoulders and felt heavy enough to push his legs through concrete and into the earth like two fence posts. The thought continued: how could he do this to her? He was one of the few people she trusted and he’d just helped destroy her.
He shoved the key back into his jeans pocket and started moving again. The underground station suddenly felt hot and confining. He headed for the nearest stairwell and inserted himself into the crush of people heading upstairs.
His mind returned to the key, then to the package he’d left in the locker. You have no choice, he reminded himself. The Russians have you by the balls. Pretending otherwise is a fool’s play.
He remembered the package that the craggy-faced Russian, Mikoyan, had brought him.
Lawson had taken the package, slammed the door in Mikoyan’s face and ripped off the plain brown wrapping paper, opened the box and reached in. He had found twenty folders inside. He’d picked up the first folder, fanned it open, studied the black-and-white photograph stapled inside. An icy fist of fear immediately had buried itself in his gut. It was his mother and father. They were seated at an outdoor café that he didn’t recognize. Once Jimmy had died, they’d relocated to California. Too many bad memories in London, they’d said. They wanted a fresh start. Neither was looking directly at the camera, but he recognized them easily. He dropped into a chair and examined the contents of the other folders. Each contained pictures of relatives, both in the United Kingdom and over in the United States.
Also in the box was a mobile phone. When it rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin. The caller had identified himself as Yezhov and laid out a proposal.
“One life or twenty,” Yezhov had told him. “You thought losing one man, your brother, was hard. That it changed your life? Left you bitter? Imagine twenty. Maybe more. And this time every drop of blood would be on your hands. Think about that.”
Lawson recalled how his grip on the phone had tightened. A mixture of terror and anger roiling his insides as the other man’s words sank in.
“You wouldn’t do that,” Lawson had said.
“We both know I would.”
Lawson wasn’t sure what had chilled him more, the man’s calm, almost bored tone as he discussed killing twenty people, or the certainty of his threat.
Finally, his shoulders had sagged in surrender. Yezhov was right. Lawson knew if he didn’t adhere to the man’s demands, people, lots of people, would die.
“You son of a bitch,” Lawson had muttered.
“I’ll send you a package. You make sure it gets into the woman’s hands. Do that and you can walk away, hands clean.”
Lawson made a noise, signifying his disgust. Neither his hands nor his conscience would be clean when all this was over.
“You plan to kill her.”
“Not necessarily,” Yezhov had answered. “I need to speak to her. She’d never come if I made the call, would she? She’d run like hell. A word of advice? Don’t think about what’s going to happen to her. Just do your small part and go back to your little life.”
Nigel, speaking through clenched teeth, had said, “Fine.”
“Good, open your front door. You’ll find another box sitting in front of it. The man who’d dropped off the last package—his name’s Mikoyan—left it. The box contains a telephone. You deliver new phones to the Nightingale when she’s in your country, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Take this to whatever prearranged spot you have. Leave it along with any other items you had planned to give her. Do that and we’ll leave you alone.”
“How do you know all this stuff? How we operate?”
“I won’t answer that. Oh, and one other thing.”
“Jesus—what?”
“I need you to make another phone call. This one to the United States. I’ll even tell you what to say.”
“Who am I calling this time?”
Yezhov recited a number and Lawson felt his knees turn rubbery.
“Look—”
“Don’t screw this up, Nigel,” Yezhov had warned. “We’re tracking your phone calls. Going through your emails. As the Americans would say, you’re my little bitch now. If you feel the urge to improvise, squelch it. Otherwise, think of the gallons of blood I’ll spill in your name. Now, go. You have a phone call to make.”
The line went dead. The Briton turned off his own phone, heaved it across the room. An enraged scream welled up inside him, burst from his lips. Dropping into a nearby chair, he covered his face with his hands, shook his head from side to side, his brain refusing to accept just how out of control his life had suddenly become.
The bastard was absolutely right. Lawson set aside the mobile phone Yezhov had sent him and made the other call.
God help him, he’d dialed the number and said the words that Yezhov had scripted for him almost verbatim. As soon as he’d hung up the phone, he’d wanted to pick it back up, call his friend and shout a warning. Instead, he’d opened his apartment door and found the promised package sitting in the hallway. Swallowing hard, he’d carried it into the apartment.
And here he was doing the Devil’s work. One life or twenty. The words chilled him. He really had no choice, did he?
* * *
LAWSON RETURNED FROM the subway station to his apartment building an hour later. Cradled in one arm was a brown paper bag that contained a bottle of whiskey, a foil-wrapped corned beef sandwich and a folded copy of the Daily World. He had bought the tabloid newspaper on impulse. He hadn’t purchased an honest-to-God, printed-on-dead-trees newspaper in years, especially the Daily World. He hadn’t seen the need. He spent every waking moment on a computer and found whatever news he needed there. Besides, most days, when he looked at a newspaper, he just got angry all over again, about Jimmy.
He climbed the dingy stairwell, lit by a pair of exposed lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling, to his apartment. He didn’t want to think about Jimmy, didn’t want to think about Jennifer Davis and her worldwide crusade. All he wanted was to down a couple of Irish coffees, eat his sandwich and tune out for a while. Not for the first time, his thoughts traveled to the Walther hidden in his top dresser drawer. Put one through the head and tune out forever. He dismissed the idea immediately. Sure, blowing out his brains may provide sweet relief for him, but it gave no guarantees that Yezhov would leave his family alone. The bastard struck Lawson as vindictive and psychotic enough to wipe out his kin simply for the sake of doing it, to feel like he’d won.
To hell with it, he thought. He’d drink and maybe with a couple of belts in him, he’d change his mind, and the Walther might look better to him.
Standing before his apartment door, he fumbled in his pockets for his keys.
By the time he’d unlocked the door, he was thinking maybe he’d forego the Irish coffee and have a couple of snorts of whiskey. Once he stepped through the door and into his apartment, he turned, and closed and locked the door.
He turned again to head for the kitchen, but halted in his tracks and inhaled sharply. The grocery bag nearly slipped from his grasp. A man leaned against the jamb of the door leading into the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest. The man stared at Lawson with his heavy-lidded, pale green eyes. The gaze seemed lifeless and had struck Lawson previously as somehow reptilian.
“Mikoyan, what the hell are you doing here?” Lawson demanded.
The man ignored him. “You dropped off the package as instructed?”
“I did your damn dirty work, yeah.”
The slit that passed for the man’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “I never should have doubted you.”
“Look,” Lawson said, “I don’t want any trouble. I did what you asked. Now leave me alone. Understand?”
“I’ll leave you alone when I am finished with you. Do you understand?”
A cough sounded from deeper inside the apartment. Lawson’s brows furrowed and he glanced through the door that led from his entryway into the kitchen. He saw a man, brown hair marbled with golden highlights, standing in the kitchen, an unlit cigarette perched between his lips. A tattoo of a snake poked out from under the right sleeve of the man’s shirt, wound its way down his arm before the body widened into a top view of the serpent’s head depicted on the back of the man’s hand. Farther inside the apartment, he heard the murmur of the television, accompanied by the occasional guffaws of an unseen man and a prerecorded laugh track.
“Meet your new roommates,” Mikoyan said.
“Like I said—”
“You don’t want any trouble. Right. That’s why you began working with this woman. What does she call herself? Nightingale?”
“I had my reasons.”
“Your brother.”
Lawson turned his gaze from Mikoyan and studied the store logo, a griffin, printed in red ink on the grocery sack.
“I don’t want to go over this.”
“I do. You might find it instructive. He was killed in Moscow, right? Car bomb.”
“Damn it,” Lawson growled.
“Government never found the killers. Correct?”
Lawson bent at the knees and set the grocery bag on the linoleum floor. When he stood back up, his fingers had curled into fists and the knuckles cocked on his hips. His mouth always had been faster than his brain, but even more so when he was angry. The rage roiling within him seared his insides like white-hot phosphorous. He thought longingly of the Walther in his room, fully focused on opening a third eye on the Russian’s forehead.
Instead, he stood his ground and opened his mouth.
“You know damn well what happened to Jimmy. He was writing about a Russian crime boss. He was a day, maybe two, from finishing the story. He left work. He was supposed to have dinner with his fiancée—who killed herself later, by the way. He climbed into his car, turned the key. The car blew the fuck up. Remember now?”
/> Lawson paused a second, then continued. Adrenaline coursed through him, caused his limbs to tremor with rage.
“The rat bastards who publish the Daily World squashed the story and eventually closed the Moscow bureau. Blamed it on budget cuts. But we know the real reason, don’t we, Mikoyan? Poor, idealistic Jimmy died for no damn reason. The authorities—” he practically spat the last word “—claimed they couldn’t find the killer. That’s in spite of all the evidence they had, including Jimmy’s notes and recorded interviews, all of which they seized and not, coincidentally, lost later. There, Mikoyan, there’s your damn story. Happy?”
“Yet, you teamed up with the woman.”
“No shit, I was there when it happened.”
“You could have worked for Yezhov. Someone with your skills, he would have snapped you up immediately.”
“They killed my brother, you damned psychopath!”
“Yet here you are, still without justice. All your brains and talent. You stole money from people. Made them angry. Stuck a thumb in their eye. But the assassin, he or she is still free, right? You worked with this woman and you got nothing for it. Congratulations.”
Mikoyan pulled his shoulder away from the doorjamb, brought himself fully erect. He uncrossed his arms, let them hang loose at his sides and stared down at Lawson. The British man stared up into the other man’s hollow eyes and his self-righteous anger cooled into fear. When he swallowed, he noticed his throat felt dry.
The Russian’s voice suddenly turned bright. “But you have left all that behind you now, haven’t you?”
“You’re a bastard,” Lawson muttered.
“And you’re lucky,” Mikoyan said, “to still be drawing breath. If it had been up to me—” He gave a slight shrug and left the statement unfinished. “But it’s not up to me. Yezhov wants you alive. At least until we see whether that stupid bitch goes and picks up the phone. Once she takes the phone, we can track her wherever she goes. But until that happens, I want you to wait here with my friends. Consider them your friends now, too.”
Mikoyan brushed past Lawson and headed for the door. On the way, he knelt down, reached inside the grocery sack, drew out the folded newspaper. Standing erect, he unfolded it and scanned the front page for a couple of seconds. Making a disgusted sound, he tossed it aside and the pages scattered over the floor.
Blood Vendetta Page 7